List of common Chinese surnames
These are lists of the most common Chinese surnames in mainland China, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora overseas as provided by authoritative government or academic sources. Chinese names also form the basis for many common Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese surnames and to an extent Filipino surnames in both translation and transliteration into those languages.
The conception of China as consisting of the "old 100 families" is an ancient and traditional one, the most notable tally being the Song-era Hundred Family Surnames. Even today, the number of surnames in China is a little over 4,000, while the year 2000 US census found there are more than 6.2 million surnames altogether and that there were 150,000 American surnames held by at least 100 people.
The Chinese expression "Three Zhang Four Li" is used to mean "anyone" or "everyone", but the most common surnames are currently Wang in mainland China and Chen in Taiwan. A commonly cited factoid from the 1990 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records estimated that Zhang was the most common surname in the world, but no comprehensive information from China was available at the time and more recent editions have not repeated the claim. However, Zhang Wei is the most common full name in mainland China.
The top five surnames in China – Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu, Chen – are also the top five surnames in the world, each with over 70-100 million worldwide.
China
This list of the 100 most common Chinese surnames derives from comprehensive surveys from 2018, 2007, and 1982. The first and second are derived from reports on the household registrations released by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security on 30 January 2019 and April 24, 2007 respectively. The third is derived from the 1982 Chinese census whose zero hour was 00:00 on 1 July 1982. Although no list of surnames was published with the initial summaries, the State Post Bureau subsequently used the census data to release a series of commemorative stamps in honor of the then-most-common surnames in 2004. Previous partial surveys proved less accurate, as many surnames are clustered regionally.The summary of the 2007 survey revealed China had approximately 92,881,000 Wangs, 92,074,000 Lis, and 87,502,000 Zhangs.
A 2018 survey showed that Liu and Chen were the next most common in mainland China with more than 70 million each.
These top five surnames--Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu, Chen--alone accounted for more people than Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world, and their total number is around the population of the USA, the third most populous country in the world.
The next five--Yang, Huang, Zhao, Wu, and Zhou--were each shared by more than 20 million Chinese. Twelve moreXu, Sun, Ma, Zhu, Hu, Guo, He, Gao, Lin, Luo, Zheng, and Liangwere each shared by more than 10 million.
All together, the top hundred surnames accounted for 84.77% of China's population. By way of comparison, the 2000 census found the most common surname in the United StatesSmithhad fewer than 2.4 million occurrences and made up only 0.84% of the general population. The top 100 surnames accounted for only 16.4% of the US population, and reaching 89.8% of the US population required more than 150,000 surnames.
Surname list
;Notes;Other surveys
400 character list
In 2013 the Fuxi Culture Research Association compiled a ranking of the 400 most common surnames.Taiwan
According to a comprehensive survey of residential permits released by the Taiwanese Ministry of the Interior's Department of Population in 2016, Taiwan has only 1,503 surnames. The top ten surnames in Taiwan accounted for 52.77% of the general population, and the top 100 accounted for 96.56%.;Other surveys
Philippines
s whose ancestors came to the Philippines from 1898 onward usually have single syllable Chinese surnames. On the other hand, most Chinese Filipinos whose ancestors came to the Philippines prior to 1898 usually have multiple syllable Chinese surnames such as Gokongwei, Ongpin, Pempengco, Yuchengco, Teehankee, and Yaptinchay among such others. These were originally full Chinese names which were transliterated in Spanish orthography and adopted as surnames.There are also multiple syllable Chinese surnames that are Spanish transliterations of Hokkien words. Surnames like Tuazon, Dizon, Samson/Sanson, Sison, Gozon/Goson/Gozum, Lacson are examples of transliterations of designations that use the Hokkien suffix -son used as surnames for some Chinese Filipinos who trace their ancestry from Chinese immigrants to the Philippines during the Spanish Colonial Period. The surname "Son/Sun" is listed in the classic Chinese text Hundred Family Surnames, perhaps shedding light on the Hokkien suffix -son used here as a surname alongside some sort of accompanying enumeration scheme.
| Rank | Name | Character | Total Number |
| 1 | Tan | 123,290 | |
| 2 | 106,507 | ||
| 3 | Lim | 96,874 | |
| 4 | 66,516 | ||
| 5 | 57,840 | ||
| 6 | Chua | 51,380 | |
| 7 | 47,832 | ||
| 8 | Ong | 39,649 | |
| 9 | Yap | 37,703 | |
| 10 | Go | 37,354 | |
| 11 | 36,543 | ||
| 12 | 29,718 | ||
| 13 | Sy | , | 28,038 |
| 14 | Yu | , | 27,732 |
| 15 | / | 26,833 | |
| 16 | / | 25,555 | |
| 17 | , | 24,837 | |
| 18 | / | 23,732 | |
| 19 | Ang | 洪 | 23,341 |
| 20 | 22,679 |
Canada
has not released a list of common surnames for any of its recent censuses, but much of the Canadian Chinese population is clustered in Metro Vancouver and Greater Victoria in British Columbia and the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and the Ottawa-Gatineau Area in Ontario, as well as in some emerging major clusters, such as the Calgary–Edmonton Corridor in Alberta, Montreal, and the Communauté métropolitaine de Québec in Quebec.Ontario
A 2010 study by Baiju Shah & al data-mined the Registered Persons Database of Canadian health card recipients in the province of Ontario for a particularly Chinese-Canadian name list. Ignoring potentially non-Chinese spellings such as Lee, they found that the most common Chinese names in Ontario were:Indonesia
Nearly as large is the Chinese Indonesian community. The 2010 Indonesian census reported more than 2.8 million self-identified Chinese, or about 1% of the general population. Just as in Thailand, though, previous legislation had banned ethnic Chinese surnames throughout the country. This law was abolished after the removal of Suharto, but Chinese Indonesian names remain a mix of Indonesian, pinyin, peh-oe-ji, and Dutch-spelled Hokkien.Malaysia
During the 2010 Malaysian Census, approximately 6,960,000 Malaysians of Chinese race. Chinese is the second largest race in Malaysia, after the Malays.Singapore
make up almost three-fourths of Singapore's resident population of nearly four million.According to Statistics Singapore, as of the year 2000, the most common Chinese Singaporean names were:
- Do take note that the 7th most common surname in China, 趙/赵, is extremely rare in Singapore.
- The surname list is not accurate, as the English surnames may actually have many variants not listed above. E.g. The 16th surname 'Low' can be 劉/刘, 廖,卢 or 羅/罗 in Chinese. The 1st surname Tan is also a pinyin romanisation for the locally rare surname or.
Thailand
United States
The 2010 US Census found 3,794,673 self-identified Chinese Americans and 230,382 self-identified Taiwanese Americans, up from 2,734,841 Chinese Americans and 144,795 Taiwanese Americans in 2000.Although the Chinese make up the largest segment of the U.S. Asian and Pacific Islander population, the most common Chinese-derived surname during the 2000 census was not itself Chinese but the Vietnamese Nguyễn.
During the 2000 census, the 10 most common Chinese American names were:
;Other surveys